Little pack rat in a great big room

You know by now that Randy and I like to quilt. One of the most basic activities (obsessions?) that quilters engage in is the building up of what's called the "stash": a hefty and ever-growing hoard of various fabrics from which to design and create one's quilts. But like rabid bibliophiles who buy way more books than they will ever have time to read, most stash-builders know (secretly or not) that they'll never be able to use all the fabric they already have. That doesn't stop them (us) from accumulating more.

Enter eBay, forum of the obsessive collector and bargain-hunter, and rationale behind my own fabric binges: what I don't use, I insist, I can always sell on eBay to other fabric-holics. The only trick is forcing myself to part with material I really like but will never realistically get around to using.

My current quilt project requires a relatively small piece of fabric from each sample, and a large number of samples, most from the 1930s (for authenticity: I want the fabric to match the pattern era). Because we live in central PA, it's not that hard to find what I need at yard sales, flea markets. Sometimes I'll spy a reasonably-priced bundle of scraps at an antique store. And my justification for buying it is always: I'll cut what I need for this one quilt, and sell the rest on eBay.

Enter the pack rat, or "Obsessive-Compulsive Lady" as we call her. If you ever go to estate auctions, there are often boxes of assorted junk piled around the perimeter: a box might hold a (used) scented pillar candle, a Tupperware bowl, a pair of flip-flops, some mayonnaise jars, a straw hat, some plastic flowers, a book or two, a heavily-pilled acrylic sweater, a soiled flower pot, drapery rings, a gimme cap with a farm logo on it, a piece of tacky jewelry with some of the shiny beads missing--any or all of the above. These boxes usually go for a dollar apiece. People will paw through them during the auction, checking out the contents, "surreptitiously" moving things so there are *two* beaded handbags in one box *plus* the mayonnaise jars (or whatever seems of value to them). It's kind of interesting to watch, but no one, you tell yourself, is really going to buy all these boxes.

OCD Lady does. I think she buys them all. And she has a building: a huge, sprawling, cavernous, many-roomed building. And let me tell you, boys and girls, it is full to bursting with dollar boxes.

Last Sunday, at a local flea market, I bought a 1945 Reader's Digest (more on this in another post) and a small piece of 30s fabric from her, and we got to talking about her shop (which, it turns out, R and I had been to--once, last year, where we kept to the main room, which actually had shelves, though we had to climb over boxes to make our way through: we actually found some pretty nice fabric--aha!--at a great price.) We've passed her place since then but there's always a chain across the gate, and more and more assorted junk disgorged from the front door (a rusted potbelly stove with intricate scrollwork but one side missing, broken chairs, tire rims, and lots and lots of rain-curled boxes). So we arranged to phone her one day soon and meet her there. Which brings us to yesterday morning.

She directed us to the fabric from the relative safety of the main room: Go past the book room and turn left, watch out for the cat--she's just had kittens and she'll let you pet her but then she turns and bites, the litte bitch, you'll have to squeeze past the bookshelves to get to the clothing room, then work all the way around to the right to get to the fabric room. You'll have to climb over some stuff. Just yell if you need anything.

Imagine a large garage with cinder block walls and sunlight passing weakly through old dirty windows. High, high ceilings, wooden beams among which noisy sparrows are darting around, kicking down what looks like straw and whatever decomposed remaining substance once comprised the ceiling. Broken half-sheets of plaster have fallen, covered in dust. All this sifts down upon what is basically a twelve-foot-high mountain of "fabric": it completely fills the room and the only way in is to step, to climb, onto it. Which we gamely did. We each chose a spot and started digging, pulling on the arm of a sweater, the edge of a jacket, and setting (tossing) each item to another area of the pile to see what was beneath.

I pretty quickly worked out a system: I opened a sheet and spread it across some fallen plaster. Whenever either of us found something of interest (we were digging for vintage cotton), we'd toss it over to the sheet. Dust flew. Some of the mountain was composed of plastic trash bags--these usually contained sweaters or draperies--and there were lots of boxes. Once in a while I'd recognize a corner of fabric as a vintage pattern, grab it, and tease it from the mess. Twice, I found boxes with someone's sewing stash intact: small bundles of fabric rolled and tied with torn strips. Some were good cotton but mots were synthetic blends, which is just too messy to quilt with.

After over an hour, I started working backward, into the "clothing room" where R had retreated earlier, setting things of interest out where I could easily find them. I had stuffed everything I wanted into a large trash bag. I tried balancing it on my shoulders, on my head, as I squeezed between sagging bookcases (of ruined books!) and made my way back to the main room. R, whose obsession is vintage photographs, had found a really interesting one ($5). My trash bag, plus a smaller bag, cost 40 bucks. We thanked the OCD Lady, blinking like moles in the afternoon sun, loaded our treasures into the thruck, and drove away, blowing our noses. I wondered what she would do with her $45: buy food? Or 45 more dollar boxes?